


Six Months Missing

by xzombiexkittenx



Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Character Study, Other, background symbrock, gay love can pierce the veil of death and save the day, seriously, what was Riot doing for six months though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-24
Updated: 2018-10-24
Packaged: 2019-08-06 23:49:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16397411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xzombiexkittenx/pseuds/xzombiexkittenx
Summary: Riot lives in the old woman for six months. This is a small piece about their relationship."Good luck with that, she tells Riot.Seven billion people, supers, gods, and monsters. And you are alien hagfish slime, allergic to oxygen.Riot doesn’t like being insulted. It roars in her head but she’s been yelled at before and hasn’t been afraid of shouting in a long time. There are much worse things than a raised voice, and the dog that barks the loudest doesn’t always bite hardest.We are not a dog!Riot snarls.No,Alya agrees.A dog can survive on its own."





	Six Months Missing

****Alya has not stood straight for going on twenty years. When the strange creature comes into her it unbends her back, strengthens her legs, and sharpens her eyesight. Alya knows hunger, she’s lived through enough trouble that she hasn’t always had a full belly, but now she is ravenous like she has never been before.

She is taken over by the creature that calls itself Riot, and it eats the bodies of people she has known most of her life. Some of them good, some of them bad. All dead now.

It is not the first time Alya has been part of killing. She stabbed a soldier who tried to rape her, many years ago, when she was young and beautiful. She got away with it and never regretted it for a second. She didn’t regret poisoning her good for nothing husband either. And now he is dead, and she is not, and she has eaten human flesh. Or, the creature inhabiting her body did, huge and strange around her, before it receded back under her skin.

The hunger abates. Her body is not her own, and she can feel the creature looking deep into her mind, learning all it can.

 _What do you want?_ Alya asks. If she helps it, maybe it will leave her alone.

In her mind’s eye she sees a series of images, like her own memories, but not her own. Space, the cold and dark, the astronauts, the capture, the crash. There are others on Earth, and Riot is the leader. It has to find the rest of the team and begin the mission.

 **Life Foundation,** Riot says. She’s not sure it knows what that means. **They have the others. We have to find them.**

_How many are you?_

**Panic, Venom, and Blight.**

Those sound like made-up names to Alya, but what does she know about aliens? She’s not an American, every day some thing falling onto their city. Spider people. Green man. Captain USA.

 **There are no others on Earth,** Riot says.

 _Don’t contradict your elders_ , Alya chides him. _There’s one from space. Asguard_ , she thinks.

 **Asguardians are here?** Riot is not happy about that, she can tell. **Is this planet protected by them?**

 _Sometimes_ , she says. _Also by Supermak, Ryujin Juwara, Cicak-man…there are many. All over now. People with powers, who help others_.

 **No puny human can stop the Klyntar,** Riot boasts. **Powers or not.**

 _If you say so_ , Alya says. _Your team must be mighty indeed to have such confidence with such small numbers. We are seven billion. Not all old ladies with bad legs either._

**We will take the rocket and return to our people and then lead an invasion force to claim this planet. And if the Asguardians come we will take them too!**

World domination. Alya doesn’t roll her eyes, because she can’t, but she also doesn’t bother to smother her laughter. She has lived through revolution, and resettling, Communism and a depression, and all other things, and that’s only in her own country. Globally, many men have tries to dominate and every empire has eventually crumbled.

 _Good luck with that,_ she tells Riot. _Seven billion people, supers, gods, and monsters. And you are alien hagfish slime, allergic to oxygen._

Riot doesn’t like being insulted. It roars in her head but she’s been yelled at before and hasn’t been afraid of shouting in a long time. There are much worse things than a raised voice, and the dog that barks the loudest doesn’t always bite hardest.

 **We are not a dog!** Riot snarls.

 _No_ , Alya agrees. _A dog can survive on its own._

For a second she thinks Riot will kill her, but then it settles down. It seems to be listening. Which is more than her husband ever did.

 **This world is dangerous** , Riot says. **It has repelled alien invasions before, with only a handful of humans.**

She can feel it clawing through her memories, but she doesn’t watch a lot of international news so Riot is left unsatisfied.

 **Very well** , Riot says. **We will do recon and then find the others.**

There’s a feeling, like hesitation.

 _You don’t like your team_ , Alya says.

 **Like is not important,** Riot says. **Strength. Intelligence. We do not value weak things.**

_Which one is weak?_

**Venom is…not weak. A problem,** Riot says. **They want to bond.**  

 _Have we not bonded?_ Alya points out.

**The true Klyntar does not desire a permanent host. Hosts are weak, lesser.**

Alya doesn’t bother to verbalize her thoughts on that. One of them is goo that cannot survive alone. One of them has carried twelve children, eight dead, and has endured.

 **Venom is foolish, without guidance they will bond to the first creature that is compatible and become irrationally protective of it. Probably bonded to a plant,** Riot mutters sounding annoyed.

Alya was given to a man who was tolerably handsome, but who turned to drink, and gambling, and then began to beat her. She never had a romance. It’s for dreamers and fools. Life is hard and you have to be harder if you want to survive.

_If you leave Venom alone it will fall in love? Can you love?_

**We cannot,** Riot says, but she’s not sure it means itself, or the capabilities of the species.

 _Love is a weakness_ , Alya says.

 **Love is weakness** , Riot repeats. **Yes**.

xxx

Riot leaves Alya in the bathroom of the airport. Back straight, legs strong, eyes clear. She was sure it would kill her. Use her up or eat her when it was done, but it flows into the little girl and leaves her whole.

“I won’t wish you luck,” she says to Riot.

“If you live to see the invasion you will be host again,” it says, sounding small and strange in the little white girl. “You are a strong host, you will be given to a valued lieutenant.” She thinks it might be giving her a compliment.

Alya walks away before it can change its mind. She doesn’t bother to alert the airport security since they’re not nearly enough to stop Riot. Eventually someone with powers will see it, it can’t keep hidden forever.

Some days later, when she has returned to her home, she sees Riot and Venom on the news, fighting for their lives over the rocket. There are no others. She assumes they died like fish on land, gasping for the thing they breathe.

Riot, with all its strength and cunning, loses. It loses to the softest of its kind with whatever host it found to love.

She has no way to find out who that person is, or if they’re happy. She was not happy, but Riot gave her a gift she won’t squander. And maybe Venom gave her something too. They put lie to the idea that love is weak. Love is strong. Love saved the Earth.

She smiles at the handsome woman who is buying from her stall and is gratified when she smiles back.

 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Six Months Missing [podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17679227) by [litrapod (litra)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/litra/pseuds/litrapod)




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